Austin Gets A Smart Parking App

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Austin Gets A Smart Parking App

Add Austin, TX to the list of cities where smartphone users can have a fighting chance at finding a parking spot.

ParkMe, based in Santa Monica, CA, has partnered with the city of Austin to release a free iPhone app that lets drivers find available parking downtown. The data is sent from the city's smart parking meters, is refreshed every five minutes and includes both on-street and off-street spaces.

In Austin, data is displayed using "heat maps" – colored overlays on streets that show real-time and predicted parking space availability. Rather than sending drivers on a wild goose chase for a single free spot, the heat map gives a general idea of the difficulty of parking in a given area at a given time. We suspect that during next year's SXSW, most of the roads will be covered with a red overlay.

ParkMe also features a recommendation engine. Just give it an address and – like a long-time local – it'll tell you the cheapest place to stash your ride.

"With its constant stream of visitors and students, we believe Austin is the perfect location to launch our real-time parking information," said ParkMe CEO Sam Friedman. It's also a good deal for the city: According to Steve Grassfield, Austin's parking enterprise manager, the city's rapid growth means downtown spots are in increasingly high demand.

We checked out the app to see just how congested the streets are within Austin city limits. Looking near the University of Texas campus on an early morning in June, it appears that it would be quite easy to find a spot. It's a little tougher to find a place to park near the state capitol building, however – a nearby section of North Congress Street seems to be in high demand. This early in the morning, we assume it has something to do with a nearby Starbucks.

In addition to the smartphone interface, ParkMe also lets businesses display parking heat maps for free on their own websites. It's good news for shops and restaurants hoping to attract people who would otherwise schlep out to the suburbs where there's a guarantee of a space in a lot.